


Predeterminism and Prophalatics in Modern Cinema

by monsterbate



Series: How to Minor in (Soul) Marks [2]
Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst and Feels, Canon Breakups, F/M, Gen, M/M, Softly Shipping Everyone, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Study Group, The Jeff of it All
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:20:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24656008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monsterbate/pseuds/monsterbate
Summary: And, most importantly, she doesn’t let herself  think about why she signs up for a study group almost involuntarily, almost indiscriminately, five months out of rehab, wondering if this will be the moment when someone will turn to her and sayYou know, I’ve been a part of a lot of study groups that fell apart because of unresolved tension.(Sometimes the Study Group shares more than soulmarks.)
Relationships: Andre Bennett/Shirley Bennett, Annie Edison/Jeff Winger, Jeff Winger & the Study Group, Troy Barnes/Abed Nadir
Series: How to Minor in (Soul) Marks [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1781293
Comments: 22
Kudos: 163





	Predeterminism and Prophalatics in Modern Cinema

Once upon a time, Annie believed in the marks. 

Eventually, she learns better: like when her parents spend her seventh birthday screaming at one another from opposite sides of the house. Like when she asks her Bubbe about marks and she smiles and says that her and Annie’s Zayde hadn’t matched and they’d been happily married for 57 years. Like when her mother tells her that the only boy she dares bring home home better have her words on him. Like when she asks ‘But what if a girl says my words?’ and gets a look of such derision that it feels like she'd been slapped. Like when she begs her mother to send her to rehab, crying so hard she has snot all down her front, and her mother says, “Your mark says _study group_ , not _group therapy_. Priorities, Annie!”

So Annie doesn’t talk about it. She doesn’t let herself think about it. She doesn’t think about what kind of person she might be if she let some words control her life the way it obviously controls her mother’s. She doesn’t think about the line of it across her hip, the sloppy penmanship so familiar to her she almost hates it. She doesn’t think about anyone with her overly-neat handwriting on their skin or love or fate because if she’s learned anything, it’s that it doesn't have to mean anything.

And, most importantly, she doesn’t admit that she signs up for a study group almost involuntarily, almost indiscriminately, five months out of rehab, wondering if this will be the moment when someone will turn to her and say _You know, I’ve been a part of a lot of study groups that fell apart because of unresolved tension._

When that moment comes, it’s almost as disappointing as Annie was expecting because the man who says her words is very interested in the blonde sitting next to him, and is also matched to every other person at the table, all six of them.

She realizes very quickly that her match isn’t thrilled by the idea of matches at all.

Well, neither is she. Clearly they have at least _that_ in common.

And it’s fine. The fact that he’s her match is unimportant. It’s not like she wanted it to happen, or was waiting for it to happen, or anything. It’ll be her little secret.

::

“I’ve got three sets,” Pierce announces one afternoon after the group has gotten distracted talking about marks again. “And I’ve gotten seven and a half matches off them, too.”

Jeff looks concerned. “A half?” 

Britta looks confused. “Seven?” 

“Oh, right: _eight_ and a half, if we count you, Jeff.” Pierce winks like it’s a gift. “But I usually don’t since I match with _ladies_ , exclusively.”

“That’s not—what do you mean, ‘half a match’?” Annie asks.

“ _Eight_?” Britta repeats. 

“She didn’t say all of my second mark, just half.” He pauses, and the rest of the study group immediately avoids making eye contact with anyone else for fear of what’s coming next. “Even though I got _all_ the benefits, sex-wise.”

“Ew,” Annie says.

“Pierce!” Shirley shrieks.

“Dude,” Troy groans. “Not cool.”

“Is it actually a match if the full mark isn’t said?” Abed asks over the sounds of disgust.

“Duh,” Pierce replies.

“No,” Annie says.

“Wait,” Britta half-shouts. “I still don’t understand how you’ve had eight matches, Pierce. That’s impossible.”

Pierce glances down at his notebook. “It’s really very obvious, isn’t it Britta? Eight people have said at least one of my marks. That’s how they work.”

Britta looks like she might climb over the table. “ _Duh doy_ , Pierce. Did you say theirs back? All eight of them?”

He shifts in his seat. “Well. Technically. I guess. No.” The last word is mumbled into his hand like he’s trying to cover a sneeze. Troy is glaring at him while Britta looks triumphant and Shirley looks sad. 

“Is it actually a match if only one person says the words?” Abed asks over the silence. 

“Hey!” Pierce shouts, pointing a finger at Abed. “You take that back! They were all matches!”

“If you don’t both say it, it’s not really a match,” Britta says. 

“The Lord marked us for a reason, Pierce,” Shirley offers gently. 

Jeff barely glances up from his phone. “You’re all taking this too seriously. They’re just words. And worse, they’re _Pierce’s_ words. Let’s study Spanish.”

“You’re just threatened ‘cause you, y’know, _matched with dudes_ ,” Pierce says in a loud whisper.

“Thank you for that ridiculous summation,” Jeff answers, opening his book. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to actually get something productive accomplished today. And no,” he continues before Pierce can interrupt again, “this conversation is not it.”

::

“Sugar boots,” Andre says over a plate of brownies once the boys are in bed. “How are things?”

The bug zapper in the backyard is on and Shirley can hear the occasional pop over the sound of wind and mosquitoes. Summer is coming to a rather disappointing close, and having a conversation about custody during the school year with her estranged husband is not topping her list of what she wants to do tonight.

“Things are fine,” she answers. She wishes she was still mad, still full of that righteous anger that had carried her through so many long weeks when Andre was out—dicking around with that _woman_ —but she’d lost the thread of it, somewhere along the way. Somewhere between enrolling in Spanish 101 and joining the study group and meeting Jeff, and—

“I’ve missed you,” Andre is saying.

“Well I don’t know what to tell you.” She gets up and begins putting away the dishes in the drying rack for something to do with her hands.

“It’s just—sugar boots, we _match_. That means something, doesn't it? It means something to me.”

“It didn’t mean anything to you a year ago, did it?” She pauses, glancing out the window over the sink and watching the fluttering of some big moth in her backyard. In what used to be _their_ backyard. “I met him, you know,” she says when the silence has gotten taut. “My other match.”

She can feel Andre stop, wait, wary. It’s a new sort of dynamic, and Shirley finds herself thinking about Jeff in that moment, how he would already be six blocks down and running if he were put in such a situation. And that makes it all feel strangely easy because Jeff is… _Jeff_ , but he’s also her friend and he said her second set of words and told her she has more to give.

“Are you—” Andre cuts himself off. “Is he—”

Shirley turns around, keeps a grip on the edge of the counter. “He’s in my study group at Greendale. He’s—” _A damn fool_ , she doesn’t say. _Pretty to look at but a pain in the ass._ “He’s complicated.”

“I—I know I was never… _good_ , about your second mark, but I hope—”

“Andre. Jeff and I matched, yes, but we’re _friends_. And that’s all we’ll ever be.”

“What?” Andre says, and there’s a familiar hot fury in his voice. “Does he not want—that can’t be right. You have always been the sexiest woman in any room you enter. And if he said your words—”

If Shirley weren’t a separated mother of two, she might blush. But this is the father of her children, who walked out on her, who said one set of her words when she was 17, and who never liked that she had another match out there the entire time they were together. Maybe it’s too late for them, but at least she has Elijah and Jordan and at least she has her friends at Greendale.

“He said a lot of people’s words that day,” she says instead, crossing to the table.

Andre chokes, vaguely, and Shirley finds herself telling him the story of how the study group came to be, the product of a horny man’s lies and the insanity that was Ben Chang. And Andre doesn’t interrupt her: no, he sits and nurses the bottle of water she’d handed him when he’d taken his usual chair at her kitchen table, and—he listens closely and he laughs in all the right places.

It’s nice. It’s nice in a way that feels dangerous and familiar and Shirley remembers the morning after she met Andre, when she’d gone for pancakes with the handsome man who’d said her words and let herself dream of white dresses and bouquets and honeymoons.

What happens next, well: that’s between a woman and her not-quite-ex husband.

::

Abed is watching Kickpuncher 3; Troy feels a strange pride in being able to name it at a glance.

“Can we talk?” he asks because he knows Abed has seen this move at least 37 times and it is therefore in the ‘okay to interrupt but only if Very Important’ category.

This thing, their soulmarks? It feels Very Important.

Abed nods in the way that means he’ll pause the movie at the next chapter break, so Troy settles into his spot on the couch next to him and picks at a loose thread in the inseam of his jeans. His conversation with Jeff is still kind of _there_ in his head, echoey and reverby like weird sound effects in bad sci fi. But he’s never really _talked_ to Abed about their marks, or their match, or any of it so he doesn’t know what Abed is going to say.

Which is a very scary thing to feel about his best friend in the entire world. So.

Kickpuncher has just discovered that the terrorists have infiltrated NASA, the FBI, CIA and NSA and is promising doom to them all when Abed picks up the remote and silence falls over the dorm room.

“You wanted to talk,” Abed says. Troy can feel his heart in his chest like a drum.

“Yeah. I did. I do.”

“Okay.”

“Can we—can we talk about marks?” Troy asks, and he sounds like a baby, like a kid on the verge of a tantrum, and he kind of hates it.

“Okay,” Abed repeats, head tilted to one side. “What about marks do you want to talk about?”

Troy finds himself pressing his hand to his side, over the marks that sit along his ribs, and he makes himself drop his arm and instead twists his thumb into his thigh. “I want to talk about my marks—and your marks. Is that—is that okay?”

Abed nods, looking away for a moment before he turns back. But this time his whole body follows, shoulders tilted towards Troy in a way that makes everything seem not so bad. “What about your marks?” he asks.

“Well, okay.” Troy licks his lips. He thinks about Jeff, randomly; how Jeff always looks like talking about soulmarks is the dumbest thing in the world, but how he’s always _touching_ his marks. And how his face goes all gross when he thinks no one’s looking. And if Jeff Winger can be brave enough to have six marks, Troy can admit to his best friend that he—that he cares about his match with him, right?

“I have...Jeff and I matched, right? And, well. We matched, too.”

“Yes,” Abed says. He’s staring at Troy’s ear, attention fixed.

“Okay. But. Abed.” Troy feels like he’s breathing hard. “Since we matched, why—why didn’t you say anything?”

“What did you want me to say?” Abed asks. “You know, Jeff asked me the same thing, after he and I matched.”

Troy feels a pang—it’s not quite jealousy because, well, _Jeff_ —but he wonders if maybe Abed just doesn’t care about his marks, and then Troy can’t stop himself from worrying what that might mean for him and he feels kind of...lost.

“So do you—?” he tries.

Abed’s expression folds up into the confused one, the one he wears when he thinks someone is asking a dumb question.

“Do you not want matches?” Troy makes himself say. He only sounds a little bit like crying.

Abed still looks confused but now also sad? It’s a look Troy _hates_ because he doesn’t like to confuse Abed or make him sad but now he’s somehow managed to do both during one stupid conversation. And it’s not even over yet, which is somehow _worse_.

“We matched. You said my words. Isn’t that why we’re best friends?” Abed says after a moment.

Troy wants to laugh, or maybe actually cry, or maybe just get some ice cream. But first he has to help Abed be not sad, which means he has to be honest with him. “I—no. Abed, we’re friends because we’re _awesome_. But we never talked about it. And you’re so important to me. So I just wanted to—wanted to make sure. That you...wanted them. Me. As a match.”

Abed lifts his hand, and for a moment Troy thinks he’s going to push play on his movie and end the conversation, but instead he touches the tips of his fingers to the little hollow under his Adam’s apple. And as Troy watches, transfixed, Abed pulls the collar of his t-shirt down an inch, and then two, revealing the end of Jeff’s mark and the start of Troy’s along the jut of his collarbones. They look glossy and warm, and Troy feels a surge of heat like he just sat on his Nanna’s electric heating pad again.

“Yes,” Abed says. “I want them. I want you.” He’s still looking over Troy’s shoulder, but for a moment he glances at Troy to meet his eyes, expression fierce. “You’re—they’re important to me. Very important.”

Troy’s grinning like an idiot but he doesn’t even care because Abed wants him and thinks he’s important and he wants to jump or shout or something. He feels good. “Awesome,” he says instead, and he lifts his hand to his side and holds the spot where his marks sit. “Super awesome. Mega awesome.”

Abed nods once, certain, and turns back towards the television. “Cool,” he says, and Troy can hear his smile in his voice, secret and theirs. “Cool, cool cool.”

::

Annie’s not that surprised when she discovers that dating with a matched mark is...hard. It’s always a topic of conversation from the moment they meet up, like they’re waiting for her to say something when they introduce themselves and when she doesn’t—when she has to explain that yes, she has a mark and no, they’re not a match and yes, she knows who is her match but no, they’re not involved—well.

So she invites Britta out for drinks and they proceed to decimate the Vatican’s stock of rum.

“What’s the matter?” Britta asks after they’ve done their second or third round of shots. Annie wrinkles her nose and considers the question seriously.

“Dating’s kind of the worst,” she pronounces.

Britta nods, big and loose. “Yes, it does because men are _gross_. But it can be fun, too, if you’re not all about your words, y’know?”

Annie laughs, picking the cherries out of her rum and coke. “I don’t care about _those_. It’s everyone else who cares.”

“What?” Britta looks confused. “I thought—well, y’know—you were looking for a match. Aren’t you?”

Annie shakes her head, then shrugs, then shakes her head again. The rum is making her feel warm; she wonders if she could get Troy to come down to the bar to dance with her. It’s not even that she wants to _dance_ , necessarily; she wants to _move_. To be in motion. To not be at rest.

“Well? Answer the question!”

Annie rolls her head back. “I kind of matched already. So.”

“What do you mean you _matched already_? With who? Do I know him?”

Annie fiddles with her empty shot glass until Britta figures it out.

“Oh my god: is it— _Jeff_?” Britta hisses the name like it might summon him. Annie almost wishes it would. Maybe he would dance.

“Yup,” Annie answers, popping her p. She’s probably drunk. No, she’s definitely drunk. But that’s okay because she’s with Britta and Britta knows about being drunk. “So,” she continues, “I’m dating.”

“What—how. No. _Why_. Why haven’t you said anything?” Britta asks. She flags down the bartender for another round of shots.

“Marks don’t mean anything,” Annie says, lifting her chin like her Bubbe used to. “Marks just mean _maybe_. And Jeff got my maybe and told me _you’re reading into things_ and _I wish I could give you an answer_. So that means his maybe is more like maybe not. So I’m going to find someone who doesn’t care like I don’t care.”

Britta looks like she’s trying to do advanced calculus in her head, expression twisted up. “You don’t care about your mark?”

Annie shrugs again, and throws back the shot that has appeared before her with alcracity. Mm, that’s a SAT word she remembers. “Do you care about your mark?” she asks instead.

Britta takes her own shot and shudders. “I don’t know. Kind of? Maybe? It’s—nice. Knowing I’m meant to, I don’t know, _connect_ with someone? That I’m not in this thing alone?”

“Sure,” Annie says. She waves down the bartender. “I guess.”

Britta seems to realize she’s killing the mood; she sits up suddenly, pushing away her own empty glass. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do: we’re going to find you a cute boy—man?—person?— _person_ who will be ecstatic to go out with you and do schmoopy crap and not even care about marks.”

Annie does not think about Jeff at this point because he’s a big idiot who says words and makes intense eye contact and _lingers_ then denies it when she calls him on it. The jerk.

So she agrees, and orders another drink.

::

“I got eight,” Pierce announces when he storms the study room during their senior year. Even though he’s graduated, he signed up for ‘one more course, for old time’s sake’ and nobody’s going to say he’s not welcome. Not after everything. “My eighth full match. She’s blonde, and speaks French, and is a world class skier.”

There’s a pause where everyone instinctively waits for Jeff to say something, to chime in with “And a half, right?” even though Jeff has graduated and is out trying to be a real lawyer again and hasn’t been seen in the vicinity of Greendale for weeks. Finally, Britta clears her throat.

“That’s—that’s nice, Pierce. What—how’d you meet?”

Pierce smiles and claims Jeff’s empty chair. “Oh, we matched over cocktails in the lodge bar. She said my words; I said hers. There was music, and _amooray_ , and a simply delightful evening spent enjoying each other’s company.”

“That’s...nice,” Shirley says.

“It was extremely nice, Shirley, thank you. And let me tell you what else was extremely nice—”

“Pierce!”

“Dude.”

“That’s gross.”

::

After Troy leaves, Abed is—alone. Jeff is still around. Jeff, his match. But he’s not—Troy. Troy, his other match.

That feels like it matters.

He doesn’t like that it matters, that Jeff is not Troy, that he misses Troy in this big, inescapable way, but he knows that Clone Abed was created specifically for this objective. To not miss Troy. To breathe. To live on. To let him go.

Sometimes, he stands in the bathroom with the shower running so Annie doesn’t know what he’s doing and lets himself stare at his marks in the mirror. The scratchy spider line of Jeff’s running down one shoulder, and the smeary tangle of Troy’s climbing the other. Both are bold and black and it’s nice that he still has two marks even though one has gone...somewhere else.

He does not know how he feels about soulmarks anymore. He used to know—he used to think they would be easy, and life would follow the expected conflict–rising action–climax–falling action–resolution plotting of every other mark story, but—

That’s not how things happened.

At night sometimes the hurt still sneaks in, and he stares at the ceiling that used to be Troy’s and he wonders if maybe mistakes were made. If maybe he should have seen this ceiling in the dark of night when it was still Troy’s ceiling. If maybe he should have wanted it to be their ceiling. If maybe that would have changed something.

Abed doesn’t think so. He thinks he would still hurt, even if it had been their ceiling.

::

Shirley invites everyone over for dinner one night after Andre leaves the second time. She mixes up enough margaritas to shock even Britta to silence, and spends three hours making homemade pasta for her lasagna. She knows she’s trying too hard but it’s not like the boys are around to distract her. So.

Abed and Annie arrive first, with hugs and a can of olives (Abed) and a bottle of wine (Annie). When Abed pulls away, he nods at her with this stoic, soft look on his face that makes something in Shirley want to weep, just a little bit. It makes her think of Troy.

Jeff actually comes on time, bearing a torte from some fancy bakery in Denver. “It’s _flourless_ ,” he says when Shirley teases him about it. “And chocolate.” But he kisses her on the cheek and offers to uncork the wine and she feels—okay.

Britta arrives last, somehow damp even though there isn’t a cloud in the sky. She offers a tupperware of salad, a bottle of Vodka, and a story about a gas station attendant who offered her scratch-off tickets in exchange for doing something with the air hose.

Whatever it is, it sounds sinful and Shirley pretends not to hear it.

Dinner is—good. Nice. They eat and laugh and try not to linger over the missing faces. And then Jeff stands, a glass of wine in hand, and looks around the table at each of them. His face is drawn, and Shirley realizes for the first time in—in five years, that they’re growing older, somehow. He looks tired.

“I just wanted to—” he starts, and then exhales out, long and slow. He meets Shirley’s eyes across the table and she knows what he’s going to say. “Sometimes, we go out looking for people to love, and sometimes—sometimes, they’re dropped in your life whether you’re ready for them or not. And I just wanted to say how nice it is to have all of you in my life. How important you are to me. Because I wasn’t ready, but somehow I have you all and that’s important. So. Don’t let it go to your heads. Cheers.”

When he lifts his glass to toast, Shirley can see the marks on the inside of his arm, see the black litany of them marred only by the one silver line cutting through their center. It punches out something in her to see it; she excuses herself to the kitchen and doesn’t let herself cry until she’s standing over her sink with the water running.

“You okay?” Britta asks, voice careful as she eases into the kitchen. “Jeff’s speech really did a number on you, huh?”

Shirley shakes her head and meets her own wet eyes in the reflection over the sink. “No—it wasn’t that.”

Britta steps closer, still uncertain. 

“Andre’s mark,” she starts, and Brita is already stifling a gasp, like she knows what’s coming. Hell, she probably does. “It went gray. And I’m—It’s hard.”

Britta wraps an arm around Shirley, a hug that’s all angles and elbows, but it’s enough. Shirley lets herself cry and cry because she’s sad. She’s _sad_. She misses her husband—her _ex_ -husband—because this time she knows it’s really, really over.

When she catches her breath, Shirley discovers that the hug has grown and now includes Annie and Abed, wrapped tight around her like they’ll never let go. Even Jeff is hovering, expression concerned as he puts leftovers in the fridge. For some reason, he’s wearing her apron and the sight of it is enough to startle a choked laugh out of her.

“What?” he says when he catches her looking. “I didn’t want to get sauce on my shirt. This is a _very nice shirt_ , do you understand? And tomato sauce is unforgiving.”

It’s—so _Jeff_ that Shirley can’t stop herself from giggling, which turns into laughing. She laughs until she’s nearly crying again, and her friends stand close and laugh, too, while Jeff drinks what’s left of the margaritas and looks annoyed by the entire thing while wearing a frilly, faded apron in her kitchen.

Somehow, in spite of everything, it’s nearly a perfect evening.

Somehow, she knows it’ll be okay.

::

Britta doesn’t need to psychoanalyze herself to know she’s got an unhealthy relationship with her mark and her matches. Because she’s matched with—enough people to know that it’s not like it just _works_ every single time. Like Jeff, for example: there’s a near miss wearing lipstick, _fuck_. Thank god she managed to escape that whole disaster.

She’s an open-minded woman, okay, but she still finds herself thinking of those ridiculous fairy tales her mother used to read to her before bed. That’s what happens when you care about those stupid marks, apparently: fantasies and shit, or something.

And yeah, those stories are filled with patriarchal bullshit about conforming to societal norms of ownership of women’s bodies founded entirely on arbitrary marks, but—

Sometimes she just wants to be the damn princess in some idiot’s story, okay? Even though she is a fully self-sufficient woman who can save her own damn self and who doesn’t need marks to tell her what to do with her body, she just wants to be—wanted. It’s not that complicated.

Whatever.

::

Annie doesn’t tell anyone when her flight’s due back from D.C.

When she really thinks about it, she’s happy to be back. As exciting as her summer had been, it had felt like an extended vacation from real life—one that was thrilling and busy and life-changing, but also exhausting and strange and unsustainable. 

So she doesn’t tell anyone she’s coming home. She doesn’t want—anyone—to think it’s because of them, because it’s not. She takes a cab back to the apartment and wrestles her suitcases up three flights of stairs and decides to head down to the Vatican when she discovers Britta’s not home because she misses her friends. And she wants a drink.

She nearly turns around when she discovers that he’s there. She’s not sure she’s ready to discover how Jeff Winger will handle their second post-kiss summer reunion. He handled the first one so well, after all.

“Oh my god,” Britta shouts when she catches sight of Annie in the doorway, loud enough that it cuts through the general bar drone. “What are you doing here?”

When Jeff turns, the world does that thing where it—stops. For just an instant. Enough to jar loose any semblance of balance, or order, or equanimity. Because the look on his face is—

Annie would give every passing grade she has ever gotten in her life to never see that look on his face again because he looks absolutely gutted. But her feet are moving and she’s taking the empty stool on his left, and leaning into his arm as she orders a drink, and he’s still—watching her. Waiting for her.

“When did your flight get in?” Britta says, voice loud in that way she gets after her second vodka soda. “Shit, I wasn’t supposed to come and get you, was I?”

“No, no: my flight landed an hour ago,” Annie says, and she can feel Jeff’s arm pressed against hers like it’s a brand. “I wanted to come and surprise everyone. So, surprise!”

Britta laughs and slides over Annie’s drink. “Well that’s good. I had like half a heart attack there. I’m glad you’re back; I missed you!”

Annie laughs. “You just missed having someone to do the dishes. And the dusting. And the laundry,” she answers. Jeff still hasn’t moved, glass caught between his palms.

“Well, sure, that stuff, too,” Britta admits with a little shrug. Someone down the bar flags her and she rolls her eyes at Annie. “Duty calls. I’ll let you two...catch up.”

Annie considers the silence. She thinks about saying something, but doesn’t know where to start. Then she thinks about just kissing him, which has historical precedent, and...other perks. But she knows how important this is, how important Jeff is, and so she sips her drink and bites her lip and waits.

“You came back,” he says after a long, long pause.

“I said I was coming back.”

“You said probably. Maybe.” He’s whispering this, like it’s a secret between them. Maybe it is.

“The thing is, I lied,” she says. “About regretting the kiss for a week. The truth is I regretted it all summer, because I let you think it was something I was going to get over.”

Jeff hunches over his glass, looking—scared. He’s got his elbows braced on the bar, and the sleeves of his shirt pushed up, and she can just make out the list of marks down the inside of his arm. She’s studied them over the years, learned them the way she learned Jeff, watching how they frightened him and how he treasured them, and how clearly he cared about them even while dismissing them.

“Annie—” he starts, but Annie’s not done. She reaches out a hand, careful, curling it over his forearm, up near his elbow. She’s laid her hand here so many times when he’d offered her his arm and it’s only now, as her fingers skim over his marks, that she realizes that this is where her words are.

“Before I left, you said—your heart wants what it wants. Did you mean it?” she asks. His skin is soft under her fingertips and she finds herself distracted by the fact that she's touching Jeff Winger with intent. She wonders if he knows she's touching him with intent.

“Annie—” he tries again, voice wrecked. She looks up and is caught by the hunger on his face. She lets herself think about what comes next. “I don’t—”

“Did you mean it?” she repeats. “This isn’t about your words. This isn’t about our match. This is about you and me. I need to know if you meant it.”

He wets his lips but can’t seem to find words. Finally, he nods, and Annie smiles.

“Then let’s get out of here,” she says.


End file.
